Western Design alumna makes her mark on familiar holiday cheer

Image: Taylor Mattson, (Design, '16), who grew up in Everett, holds the “Ribbon” Starbucks red cup she designed that evokes a holiday sweater type pattern. The cup is used worldwide. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)

Taylor Mattson, who hails from Everett, designed two of the season’s four Starbucks red cups that are caffeinating the masses in this coffee-est time of the year.

The colorful cup with a striped ribbon pattern that evokes a holiday sweater is her doing. Her other cup is green with polka dots.

About 400 million red cups were printed this year just for U.S. and Canadian Starbucks.

The annual red cup ritual at Starbucks started in 1997 with a hand-drawn holly design offered at its then-1,400 coffeehouses.

With holiday cups now distributed at 30,000-plus Starbuck's stores worldwide, Mattson said friends from Scotland and Hong Kong tagged photos of them with her Ribbon cup.

Read the full story by Andrea Brown of the Everett Herald